On May 1, 2013, Mike Fleming broke the news on Deadline that Daniel Radcliffe would play Jake Adelstein in the feature adaptation of Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan (published by Pantheon in 2009), to be directed by music video and commercial director Anthony Mandler, based on a script by playwright JT Rogers, and produced by John Lesher and Adam Kassan.
Almost ten years later, after a long and winding road, Tokyo Vice will debut as a series on HBO Max, starring Ansel Elgort as Jake and Ken Watanabe, written by JT Rogers, who is also the showrunner and an EP, directed by Michael Mann, produced by Endeavor Content and Japanese pay-TV broadcaster WOWOW, with Executive Producers Alan Poul, Emily Gerson Saines, Brad Kane, Destin Daniel Cretton, Kayo Washio and John Lesher.
The Last Yakuza: A Life in the Japanese Underground, a singular, in-depth, occasionally humorous, often dark, but inspiring tale about the life of former gang boss Tatsuya Mochizuki, aka “The Tsunami,” his unlikely friendship with the author, and the history of Japan’s ubiquitous mafia was published in France, Poland, and China, and English language rights are with James Gurbutt at Constable & Robinson in the UK, and Henry Rosenbloom at Scribe in Australia/New Zealand.
Jake’s next book Tokyo Private Eye: Investigation, Damnation, and Salvation In The Land Of The Setting Sun picks up where Jake left off in Tokyo Vice and chronicles his other career, battling the Yakuza and other criminals as a due diligence investigator, writing reports for disgruntled corporate executives. Written in three parts, it interweaves Jake’s personal breakdown with Japan’s meltdown, organized crime, political corruption, the process of corporate investigations and shows the collusion between mafia, state, and business that led to a nuclear disaster. It will be published by the wonderful Les éditions Marchialy in France in Spring 2023, which also published Tokyo Vice, The Last Yakuza, and will publish a graphic novel adaptation of Tokyo Vice as well.
Read Peter Hessler’s excellent profile of Jake Adelstein, “All Due Respect: An American Reporter Takes on the Yakuza” in the January 9, 2012 issue of The New Yorker.